


The Promises of Supercells

by RC_McLachlan



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27939152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/pseuds/RC_McLachlan
Summary: Yuri deals with a stomach bug minutes before he's due to perform. Otabek lends a hand."Can you even stand?""... Yes.""Prove it and I'll make sure no one stops you from getting to the ice," Otabek says, and Yuri doesn't have to open his eyes to know that Otabek has that look on his face, the one that's barely a look at all: an impenetrable castle with time-worn stone, overgrown with ivy and moss. It's unnerving as hell and never fails to fill Yuri with vicious glee to see it turned onto lesser mortals, but this time it's on him and that rankles enough to spur him into motion."Fine." He pushes himself up and carefully gets to his feet, then, smarmily, throws his arms out wide. "See? Drink it in, asshole."Otabek says nothing for a long moment. "You didn't do anything."
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 24
Kudos: 128





	The Promises of Supercells

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" Yuri mumbles into the thing he's lying on. He's almost positive he's still in the bathroom stall, so it might be the toilet seat. With his luck it's the floor. Not that it matters—it's so cool against his burning cheek that it's completely worth every strain of hepatitis he's getting from it. "I'm here to win a gold medal and fight crime."

"Yakov is looking for you."

"Tell him I'll be out in a minute."

"Victor and Katsuki are looking for you, too."

"Tell _them_ I'm dead."

"Not too far from the truth, by the looks of it."

"How dare you. I'm perfect. I'm in my _prime_. I'm—ugh, hang on—" It's only by dredging the bottomless depths of his determination, the cold runoff from the wellspring at the summit of Spite Mountain, that he manages to get his face practically inside the toilet before the next bout of nausea hits like a freight train.

To his credit, Otabek says nothing, just waits patiently for Yuri to finish puking before attempting to appeal to Yuri's better judgment. "You're not going out there like this."

"That your professional opinion, Dr. Altin?" He means for it to be positively dripping with bile, gone rough and sharp, the words eaten through with stomach acid. And they are. Literally. He spits out a chunk of something that might be tomato and then flails for the roll of toilet paper hanging on the wall next to him so he can wipe his chin.

Otabek takes a careful step forward. "Yura."

"Don't _Yura_ me," Yuri whines through clenched teeth, wuffing helplessly, mouth filling so quickly with saliva that he feels like he's drowning. He spits it into the toilet. He read somewhere that if you swallow spit when you're nauseated it'll actually make you throw up more. "I worked too long and too hard for this, and I'm not about to let a little stomach bug that I probably picked up from some moron who couldn't be bothered to wash their hands get in the way of a win. I'm _reaching for the fucking stars_."

"Can you even stand?"

"... Yes."

"Prove it and I'll make sure no one stops you from getting to the ice," Otabek says, and Yuri doesn't have to open his eyes to know that Otabek has that look on his face, the one that's barely a look at all: an impenetrable castle with time-worn stone, overgrown with ivy and moss. It's unnerving as hell and never fails to fill Yuri with vicious glee to see it turned onto lesser mortals, but this time it's on him and that rankles enough to spur him into motion.

"Fine." He pushes himself up and carefully gets to his feet, then, smarmily, throws his arms out wide. "See? Drink it in, asshole."

Otabek says nothing for a long moment. "You didn't do anything."

It takes a second for the words to sink in, but before he can muster the energy to punch Otabek for impugning his honor, Yuri realizes that he's still on the floor, head in the toilet like he's wearing the world's most fucked-up hat. He tries to gather the strength he's been working to gain for the last six months under Lilia's terrifying tutelage and conquer the daunting task of pushing himself up, except his arms don't so much as tense. 

"Just _throw_ me onto the ice," Yuri whispers, squeezing his eyes shut against the first hot pinpricks of frustration that lurk just behind his lashes. "A belly flop from me is better than anyone else's best short program."

There's a sudden, gentle hand on his back that feels like someone just plunked an elephant on top of him, and it hurts like nothing he's ever felt and feels so good he almost thinks about just letting the tears come after all. He endures both an eternity and mere seconds of this before it disappears altogether. His mouth opens and a startled moan falls out. 

Otabek murmurs, "When did it start?" 

He can't quite pin that down because there's a weird moment after takeoff where time ceases to exist, but by the time his flight touched down at LaGuardia Yuri had been doggedly swallowing around the sour crackle in his jaw for what felt like hours, his skin a soaked canvas painted in whorls of fire and ice. He damn near killed some old bat on the skybridge in his haste to get to the bathroom just in time to be reacquainted with the in-flight meal—some roasted chicken thing that they served in a cardboard package. The tomato rice side was pretty decent, so of course that's all he can fucking taste.

"I'm never flying KLM again." His voice spirals tragically into the stratosphere and then cracks on _again_. If Otabek doesn't slam the toilet lid down on his neck right this second and end this humiliation, Yuri is cancelling their friendship. "I'm gonna send the CEO a glitter bomb. And then burn his house to the ground."

"I'll find the address for you," Otabek says, and it's the click and flare of fire underneath a pot of cold water, a simmer slow to start but bringing with it the promise of boiling over. Yuri's never seen Otabek angry, but he knows when it happens it'll leave him absolutely devastated in an impact crater of his own making. It's always the quiet ones. Look at Seung-gil. That kid is a serial killing spree waiting to happen.

Yuri's eyes are burning. He closes them in search of a moment of respite from this complete and utter shitshow, and tries again. "The season's just starting and I _have_ to go on, Beka. If I don't, I'm out. You, Victor, _and_ Katsudon are all competing and I can't—after all of this fucking shit, I can't _not_ —"

Even if he wanted to bow out, he doesn't know how. Every trace of acceptance has been beaten out of him, so much that even the muscle memory's atrophied to nothing. He's a creature composed entirely of sharp angles and grit, created in the image of a woman who is a walking, talking steak knife, and he's not about to dull his edges just because he didn't go with the vegetarian option. 

Nothing short of death is stopping him from going out there, and even then he's sure he could finagle something. 

"No one would think badly of you if you—" 

" _I_ would think fucking badly of me, and my opinion is the only one I care about," he snarls, then lets out a truly horrifying whimper. The worst of the nausea has passed, but he wants to throw up anyway. "I didn't mean that."

He never does. Sometimes the words come faster than he can think to stop them, more barbed than he wants, dripping with blood he didn't mean to draw, but by that point it doesn't matter because no one in their right mind is going to stick around to search through a steaming pile of shit in hopes of finding a flower.

"I know what you meant," Otabek says simply. 

It’s thrown down like a winning card hand, like fire from on high, and for a split second Yuri is so thrown by the sheer indelibility of it that he can’t see for the slant of the sun in his eyes while Park Güell hides them from the world. _Are we going to be friends or not?_

There are words he should be saying to express the sheer gratitude he feels that Otabek is here, is in his life at all, and they might all taste like tomato-flavored vomit but they'd be _something_ , and if Otabek deserves anything it's that. Instead, they sit pretty in the back of his throat and hold onto his tongue for dear life, which, _fuck_ , no, they have to let go so he can tell Otabek, so Otabek knows—

Tears burn at the corners of his eyes, rough-riding the sudden wave of frustration at his inability to act like the fucking person he wants to be for Otabek Altin. The flower hiding in the pile of shit. 

Otabek just exhales, long and low, and murmurs, "Okay."

The world tilts suddenly, dangerously. Yuri's stomach begins shouting "ALL HANDS ON DECK, WATCH YOUR SHOES" but he clenches his jaw and forces that shit back down, tucking his hot face into the place where Otabek's throat meets his shoulder with a truly pathetic whine. Otabek lifts him like he weighs less than nothing. Yuri tries not to take it personally, on account of Otabek being a fucking terminator.

"Hey." The shoulder Yuri's nestled against rises and gently falls. "Lift up for a second."

" _You_ lift up. I'm staying right here until you toss me into the rink. Hope you haven't skipped arm day, asshole, because—"

Otabek doesn't even give him a chance to finish the sentence, just bounces Yuri's cheek with his shoulder because he was raised by wolves, grumbling something that sounds an awful lot like 'don't tempt me,' and turns his head.

Every single thought leaves Yuri's head as though they were woodland creatures fleeing from a forest fire set by a bunch of jackasses in the woods, except one stubborn bastard stands its ground:

_No one's lips should be this soft._

"My mom used to take our temperatures like this," Otabek murmurs against Yuri's forehead. "Said it worked better than any thermometer."

Helplessly, Yuri's hand slides up to grab a fistful of butter-soft leather. The ubiquitous motorcycle jacket shouldn't be as much of a comfort as it is, but the storm churning in his gut settles just a very little bit at the feel of it. He draws a breath that rattles in his throat and tastes a little like puke, but there are notes of something wild in it—a lonely wind trying to catch up to a motorbike that seems to fly all on its own, or the thump of the bass buried beneath the layers of an unfinished song—that he savors like a stolen sip of someone else's vodka. For a moment, his mind goes quiet.

"You don't feel that warm." The lips pressed to his skin curve up. "You're good to go. That's my professional opinion."

The smell of the wind dissipates altogether from Otabek's skin. Yuri opens his eyes, present and accounted for, and bites back a whimper at the sudden rush of something that feels like a chill, but isn't. It's as though his entire body has become a live wire, exposed and ready to blow. His skin prickles, cold, then hot, and he snaps, "Dr. Altin saves the day."

"Good thing I'll have something to fall back on if skating doesn't work out." 

"Fix your sloppy fucking toe loops and you should be fine." The thought of Otabek not being on the ice is a terrifying one. He wiggles a little until Otabek gingerly puts him down. When his skate guards hit the floor, Yuri wobbles, and for a second he thinks that gravity's going to add insult to injury by pushing him just enough for him to crumble to the ground, but he locks his knees and holds steady.

Stepping back, Otabek doesn't say anything, but Yuri can practically hear the gears turning behind that controlled front—which he suspects is hiding secret mind-reading abilities—while he cycles through every possible response. But every response is the wrong one, and Otabek isn't stupid. So he doesn't say anything, just gives a shrug and gestures to the door.

"If Victor and the pig are waiting out there—"

"I'll run interference for you," Otabek says, and the hell of it is he would, too. "Go rinse out your mouth. Your breath smells like death."

"I'm gonna hurl on everything you love," Yuri vows, but he wobbles over to the sink. Against the back of his throat, the cold water feels like the first push off on fresh ice. He spits, then splashes water over his cheeks and chin, and carefully avoids his forehead. 

Otabek hands him a fistful of paper towels, then gestures to his own chest. "You have a little…"

"There are so many rhinestones on this thing that no one will ever see it through the glare," Yuri mutters, drying his face and then dabbing at his chest. "If you ever tell anyone about this, I swear to god I'll put sugar in your gas tank."

The unimpressed tilt of Otabek's eyebrow speaks volumes and Yuri averts his eyes to the crumbled paper towels in his hand, a little ashamed. If there's one thing he's learned since they watched the sunset on the top of the world, it's that Otabek Altin is ride or die to the very end.

Pressing his lips together to prevent anything stupid from falling out—like an apology, or a plea for Otabek to bring his mouth back, but lower—Yuri tosses the paper towels in the trash and then holds out his arms, presenting himself for inspection. A rumbling threat of backflow stirs in his belly, but it turns out to be a little burp. He holds it in. "Well?"

Mila once joked that Otabek's superpower is to "look at the _hell_ out of things" and she wasn't wrong. The first time that stare was leveled at him, he was completely unprepared: his legs shook, his heartbeat kicked into double time, and all sound seemed to disappear. In all honesty, he thought he was having a stroke. But then the weight slid away like a shadow, leaving him oddly bereft as the weird, hot guy with the thousand-laser stare blinked, looked elsewhere, and walked away. A punch to the jaw would've been easier to take.

It's been ages since that day, but the effects haven't lessened with time. Even now, Otabek's gaze is the slow, considering drag of a storm, towing the line where a harmless breeze gives way to a writhing, spinning hunger. Yuri loves storms; loves the sheer scale of them, the unpredictability, the unapologetic hunger that tears at the very fabric of the world. A storm doesn't hesitate. A storm doesn't say sorry, and it isn't weak, except when it is, and even then it's unstoppable. In another life he'd be chasing them, flaying them open to learn their secrets and devouring whatever he found. 

The smile Otabek gives him is small but heartfelt, because he hasn't given Yuri proof that he knows any other kind. It feels like the bone-rattling promise of a supercell. 

"Perfect."

Otabek isn't a storm to be hunted. He isn't a mystery; as the first person who's ever voluntarily stuck around for Yuri, he's a miracle. And you don't pull those apart to try and find the center. You just have to be grateful they happened at all. 

"Wonderful," Yuri snaps, cheeks burning. "Time to blow minds."

"And not chunks." 

It's only by the grace of Otabek's terminator reflexes that he manages to easily sidestep the punch that Yuri aims at his face.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a couple of years ago as the start of a "5 Times Otabek Kissed Yuri" thing that never went anywhere, but I still really liked this piece, so I figured it was time to get it out of Google Docs.


End file.
